2009-08-12

I was going to post sooner, but I thought it best to have at least a week of real experiences before doing so. Now that I'm an "expert" on all things 3.2, I can deliver my brutally honest verdict. :)

Engineering

I've always been a massive fan of this profession. It was quirky and largely pointless, and that was a big part of the attraction. It was fun because it didn't really try to be a serious raiding profession. Now it is a wonderful profession for everyone, with it's convenient accessories and surprisingly competitive Tinkers. It isn't unusual to raid with three or four other Engineers now, making our Reverse Engineer ability more complicated than ever.

By the way, I accidentally ninja'ed the schematic for Jeeves the other night. :)

Death Knights

I am very concerned with the current state of Death Knights at the moment, but I'm sure this will pass as we have more and more time with the simulators, calculators, and good old fashioned DPS meters. Months ago I was quite keen to see Blizzard's new vision for Dual-Wielding: competitive but not the best.

Of course, in executing that vision they seem to have distorted the Unholy tree (RIP Scourge Strike) and marginalised the Blood tree. Scourge Strike is the signature ability for Unholy Death Knights, and yet Obliterate scales better because of the retardedly high amounts of Armor Penetration that Blizzard has been throwing around.
/sigh

As with Engineering, I liked it better when I could choose a quirky, slightly sub-optimal playstyle that felt like it was my own and made me unique in a sea of off-red names. I'm hoping Blizzard fix this before competition for one-handed weapons gets crazy.

Interface Enhancements

When word broke that Blizzard was going to be throwing in features that aped a certain unnamed questing addon (we'll just call it "Rest Gelper"), I was hopeful. As infinitely customisable as the interface has always been, I'd simply prefer a solution from Blizzard for certain things.

I have yet to actually see any of these quest indicators on the map though. I even stopped using world map addons to see if they were interfering, but to no avail.

The Equipment Manager saw some love though and it is now the best solution for managing one's equipment. And the Advanced Objectives Tracker they threw in a while ago seems to have had some bug fixes but it's still not quite perfect. I use it though because I feel uneasy about Rest Gelper.

Dungeon Difficulties

As a purveyor of an addon to help untangle and display the often cluttered and unsorted Raid Information window, I found many of the changes to the instance system promising but annoying. It seems SavedInstances is going to take a few more days to get working again, but it'll be worth it.

I like the separation of Dungeon Difficulties and Raid Difficulties. It would be cooler still if the language they used was suitable for refering to Classic raids, but that's probably asking too much. It'll take a long time before everyone starts referring to instances correctly though. :)

Trial of the Champion

Okay, the introduction was cool the first few times but it is officially too long now. Blizzard needs to put in a dialogue option or something so we can optionally shorten it. It is a cool introduction, I can't stress it enough, but the fact that every run has this 5 minute speech at the start is really frustrating.

Not as frustrating as the fact that the trinkets that drop in there are as rare as they are awesome. I ritually farm this instance several times a day and have yet to walk out with anything more than Emblems of Conquest and Champion's Seals.

Trial of the Crusader

The guild knocked this over in between General Vezax attempts this week (and we got him down as soon as we got back to Ulduar). Of the encounters they could have chosen from, they definitely picked a really fun one for us to start with.

Looking at the loot tables, it looks like there is pretty much a single item per equipment slot, with the exception of the Tier slots. This means Best-in-Slot calculations are quite simple, assuming the basic attributes on the gear are enough to outweigh the surprisingly equal amounts of Armor Penetration, Critical Strike and Haste Ratings. I think a few players will be tempted to hang on to their Heroic-difficulty Ulduar gear, especially if they are nuts about Armor Penetration.

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